When most people go to the airport, they may notice that every airplane
looks the same, and the way that airplanes look - and what they can do -
hasn't really changed since the 1950s. A natural conclusion is that
designing airplanes is not very interesting and does not require much
creativity. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Around the
world, engineers and scientists and academics - and inventors in their
garages - are creating airplanes that implement bold new concepts that
will shape the airplanes of the future.
This book is for kids of
all ages, and shows the latest, most creative, and most innovative ideas
in the field of airplane design. The book is full of large, exciting
pictures of exotic, unusual, and futuristic airplanes. The innovative
technologies in each airplane is explained in simple language.
The
concepts shown in this book are currently being tested and figured out.
If the reader becomes an engineer in 10 or 20 years, they will use
these new ideas - and their creativity! - to make the airplanes of the
future better than those of today.
The goal of the book is to get
kids interested in an area of STEM that is growing very quickly: Every
year, new designs are unveiled for drones, reusable spacecraft, "flying
cars", electric or solar aircraft, futuristic airliners, and airplanes
that can fly at extreme speeds and altitudes - or that can hover, and
take off and land straight up and down like a helicopter. Younger kids
will enjoy the pictures while having the text read to them. Older kids
can use the book as a springboard for research into the many other
innovative aircraft mentioned along the ones shown in the photos, to
learn some of the fundamentals of aeronautical engineering.
The
book was written by a Boeing airplane designer who consulted with many
people involved in unusual and innovative aircraft: The experts
developing a Mach 5 airliner that can fly at the edge of space, the
engineers who designed the world's most fuel-efficient helicopter (which
can fly for 24 hours nonstop), the leaders of the organization that
created one of the fastest jets in history, NASA researchers who work on
the next generation of electric airplanes, flight instructors whose
airplanes are the first to include amazing new safety features, and
inventors who build futuristic airplanes in their garages and then fly
them!
The book illustrates these concepts by showing and
explaining patents by Boeing and Airbus, futuristic concepts by NASA and
Lockheed, record-breaking airplanes by Scaled Composites, research
projects at universities, and photos of the latest experimental
proof-of-concept airplanes doing things that no other airplane had ever
done before!
http://www.AirplanesOfTheFuture.com